Godzilla (1984) aka The Return of Godzilla

Godzilla (1984) aka The Return of Godzilla

A Toho Production, Japan

Directed by Koji Hashimoto

Produced by Tomoyuki Tanaka

Written by Shuichi Nagahara

I first saw this film when I was nine years old. I remember the rented video copy, and watching with my then best friend. That version was, of course, dubbed (badly, as I recall) and the plot made little sense, but had something to do with Godzilla appears, Godzilla is too powerful for modern weapons, Godzilla falls into volcano at the end. I didn’t know at the time that I was watching a re-edited (some would say bastardised) version. It transpires that the American distributors were not happy with the Japanese version (which ran to some 103 minutes) and edited it down to 87 minutes whilst also including some specially shot insert footage, and making the Russians more of the ‘bad guys’. Happily, the Japanese version is now available (online, if you look carefully), and while it’s not a completely different film from the one I remember, it’s certainly more thoughtful, and certainly truer to the spirit of the original Godzilla from 1954 than most of its predecessor films. I think it’s fair to say that the intervening Godzilla films had become quasi parodies of themselves, with Godzilla becoming too ‘kiddie friendly’. Godzilla 1984 was effectively a reboot of the franchise and the launch of what has become known as the Hensei series of Godzilla movies.

Godzilla 1984 gets back to the horror of the first film – a horror that is a concept rather than anything displayed on screen: Godzilla is the by-product of nuclear weapons testing, a nightmare given form – that of an 80 metre tall beast. Godzilla is the personification of the unintended consequences of nuclear weapons of mass destruction, and the beastly motivations that brought them into existence. Crude though the comparison may be, Godzilla is the Japanese icon for the manifestation of death and destruction, in the same way that Death is personified by Ingmar Bergman in The Seventh Seal as a man with a pale white face, dark cloak and scythe.

Godzilla 1984 sidesteps any continuity problems with the interceding films (most of which were set in the future anyway) by treating them as never having existed. Godzilla 1984 links itself directly to Godzilla 1954. In so doing, it gives itself the licence to look seriously at the issue of nuclear proliferation and bring that issue (then) up-to-date.

What is remarkable about Godzilla 1984, and what I found more interesting than actually watching Godzilla smashing up Tokyo, was the realpolitik that the film allows itself to indulge in. It’s a fascinating insight into the Cold War paranoia of the 1980s. Over 25 years on, the concerns expressed by the politicians in the film seem incredibly dated, and yet, that is precisely what I found so interesting and compelling about them. And while the politics that is shown in the film is no doubt far removed from any kind of reality, the allegory is clear. And what is even more fascinating is to see the Cold War conflict from the Japanese point of view. Even more surprising (watching the film today), but actually quite moving, when one understands that the film was made a mere 40 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is the decision of the Japanese Prime Minister in the film to not allow the use of nuclear weapons to destroy Godzilla. While the shadow of the fictional monster that is Godzilla towers over the fictional protagonists of the film, one has the feeling that the shadows of Hiroshima and Nagasaki loom even larger over the Japanese. Interestingly, both the Americans and the Soviets are presented as trigger happy rivals, both pleading to be allowed to use nuclear weapons on Godzilla. There’s a wonderfully funny and ironic moment when both the American and the Soviet envoys are jointly petitioning the Japanese Prime Minister (played with wonderful dignity and gravitas by Keiju Kobayashi) to allow a nuclear strike, and the American envoys points to his Soviet counterpart and says “He’s right!”. I don’t recall that bit being in the version I saw as a boy, but it is one of the highlights of the film.

As for Godzilla himself, to be honest, the monster is not all that convincing. While the Godzilla costume is an improvement on the ones that came before it, it still looks – fake, even by the daikaiju (giant monster) film standards. Of course, at nine years old I wasn’t complaining, and, truthfully, I’m not now. If anything, this is what gives the film part of its charm, and requires the viewer to enter into its world and, for the duration of its 103 minutes, suspend disbelief.

Godzilla is certainly portrayed as the ‘heavy’, the monster that must be dealt with, but at all times there is a recognition that Godzilla is only Godzilla because of man. Godzilla is certainly the enemy, but one that deserves understanding. And in the final reel of the film, Godzilla is not destroyed, he is sent back to his subterranean sleep by being blasted into an active volcano – to reappear again? Certainly that remains a credible possibility at the end of the film (and is exactly what happened).

The other special effects are pretty good. The miniature Tokyo is by and large convincing, and gets thoroughly trashed by the guy in the Godzilla costume (Kenpachiro Satsuma).

Credit is also due to the other lead actors, Ken Tanaka as Goro Maki, Yasuko Sawaguchi as Naoko Okumura, Yosuke Natsuki as Prof. Hayashida and Shin Takuma as Hiroshi Okumura, who are all very convincing.

Godzilla 1984 dared to take itself seriously. It posed some serious questions, and in its own way, was a thoughtful entry into the series. I’m glad I saw it again.

Mic-Macs - A Review

Mic-Macs – A Review

Stylistically, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, director of Amélie, has been one of the most important influences of the last decade on young filmmakers. Not only that, but his films are so lovingly crafted, there’s an almost artisan touch to them. His films are at once typically French, and yet also universal – they travel well, and are received positively in all parts of the world.

And like a true artisan, Jeunet takes his time with his projects. He genuinely crafts them. It’s been five years since A Very Long Engagement. So his new film, Micmacs (or Micmacs à tire-larigot as it in French) is nothing short of a mini event.

‘It’s good to be a little odd…to get a little even’ reads the tag-line on the English posters for the film, whose plot follows Dany Boon’s character Bazil as he falls in with a motley band of eccentric, colourful characters to take on two big arms.weapons dealer whose devices of death were responsible for (a) Bazil’s father being blown up by a landmine when Bazil was a boy and (b) for the bullet lodged near Bazil’s brain.

After the opening credits, which parody the classic Hollywood movies of the 1930s and early 1940s, accompanied by Max Steiner music, we’re back in the sepia-toned Paris of Amélie that is so beloved of Jeunet – that Paris somewhere between reality and fantasy, the real world and the imaginary, the Paris that doesn’t truly exist, but we wish it did. Certainly, the film freely crosses any such boundaries with a sort of impunity – this is Jeunet’s Paris, after all.

But perhaps that’s what undid the film for me. We’ve seen this Paris before. We’ve seen these characters before. If the setting is reminiscent of Amélie, then the characters are reminiscent of Jeunet’s earlier works Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children. In Mic-Macs, Jeunet’s make-shift heroes live in a quasi bohemian lair under a junkyard, where they recycle things, and one character even turns the junk they collect into elaborate mechanical puppets that perform hypnotising dances. The problem I felt was that these characters, their alternative, almost post-apocalyptic subterranean life, seemed recycled from earlier Jeunet films. And not even the performances of the actors (including Jeunet regular Dominique Pinon and Jeunet favourite Yolande Moreau) could disguise this.

The critics in England loved the movie. One critic even went so far as to say “each frame is perfect”. I beg to differ – but not because this is a bad film – it certainly is not. It’s a very good film, and it’s extremely well crafted. But it’s not original. And that’s its problem. And that’s why it didn’t work for me.

As I mentioned above, Jeunet’s style has become almost ubiquitous – particularly for young filmmakers making short films. Jeunet has developed a form of visual hypertext (originally inspired by Sergio Leone) – but one that has been copied almost ad nauseam by his imitators. The problem I had with this film was that it now seems that ‘Jeunet is imitating Jeunet’. The visual style that was so fresh and that worked so well in Amélie, and that was used with greater restraint (appropriately so) in A Very Long Engagement, now seems depassé – out-dated, outmoded. Some of the visual gags we’ve seen before – some are even borrowed from elsewhere (I spotted one that was borrowed from the Simpsons). For me, the moments that worked best were the small moments of silent comedy – few and far between in this film – where Dany Boon seems to channel both Keaton and Chaplin in his facial expressions and mannerisms, like the scene early on where he wants the girl he likes to think that he’s gotten into a cab and driven away, so he pretends to get into a cab and be driven away. I’d like to see Jeunet do a feature-length silent film, but without the gimmicks and the visual hypertext that he usually employs. That would present him with a real challenge.

Because that’s what I felt was lacking in this film: it was Jeunet painting by numbers – he hadn’t set himself a real challenge. If Jeunet is ‘guilty’ of anything with this film, it’s having too much imagination. Is it even possible to have too much imagination? I believe so. And it seems that Jeunet gave himself/was given carte blanche to put everything in his dreams on the screen. The result is stylistically coherent, but again lacks the originality of Jeunet’s earlier films. Jeunet’s satire of the arms trade and his deflating of the pompous arms dealers by literally ridiculing them, is well intentioned, but I have my doubts if it would really work (although it is a nice fantasy). To this extent, there’s no doubt the film’s heart is in the right place. But I never got the feeling that this film had a soul.

Still, I wouldn’t give the film anything less than four stars out of five. To follow the logic of the English tagline for the film: this review has been a little odd, so four out of five for the film should make it a little even.

For now, we must play the waiting game to see what Jeunet, still cinema’s true artisan, still ever the master-craftsman, will come up with next.

- April 2010

15 Years of ‘Smoke’ – A Retrospective Appreciation

15 Years of ‘Smoke’ – A Retrospective Appreciation

The mid 1990s was something of a golden time in American cinema – American independent cinema, that is. In the wake of the success of Pulp Fiction, came a small stream of modestly budgeted American indie movies. That’s not to say that Pulp Fiction was responsible for those films, but it certainly helped pave the way, and demonstrate to producers that independent films could be profitable.

One such film was ‘Smoke’, written by novelist Paul Auster and directed by Wayne Wang, released in 1995. Set in Brooklyn in the summer of 1991, it tells the story of the lives of a number of Brooklynites who paths lead them to and from the Brooklyn Cigar Company, a small corner shop run by Harvey Keitel’s character, Auggie Wren. Among the characters whose lives collide in small but unexpected ways (and sometimes unexpectedly powerful ways) are Paul Benjamin (William Hurt), a novelist grieving for the death of his wife, whose life is saved by a black teenager, Rashid (Harold Perrineau) who is on his way to find his father, Cyrus Cole (Forrest Whitaker). Then there’s Auggie’s old flame Ruby (Stockard Channing) who comes to him to get help with her (and possibly his) daughter, Felicity (Ashley Judd). Added to these are some deft characterisations from the supporting players (mention must be made of Giancarlo Esposito, Jared Harris, Mary B Ward, Jose Zuniga and Steve Gevedon) which give the film an extra depth, another layer of richness.

‘Smoke’ is an outstanding little film in many ways. It consciously breaks many of the rules of filmmaking: it has long dialogue scenes, most of the characters (particularly Hurt and Keitel) have some great monologues, visually the story is told primarily in master shots with the occasional medium shot (close-ups are reserved for the final scene in the film) thus giving the actors the freedom to breathe. And while the film is particularly (and appropriately) reverential to Paul Auster’s words, the film also takes a particular delight in the silences between the words, the pauses in the dialogue, that feel so real and so utterly believable. In a key scene in the film, Paul sits with Auggie as Auggie shows Paul his “life’s work”: four thousand photographs of the same location – 8 a.m. on the corner of 3^rd Street and Seventh Avenue, with pictures going back to the late 1970s. Paul’s reaction is that it’s overwhelming. To which Auggie replies: “You’ll never get it if you don’t slow down, my friend”. And the same is true of the film itself. It requires, demands, even, that the viewer slow down, take in all the details, ponder the pauses in the dialogue, the looks that pass between the characters., consider the themes underlying the film.

From a thematic perspective, ‘Smoke’ is very rich. The film indirectly asks a lot of questions, such as: if something is stolen by someone, but is then stolen by someone else who puts that thing to good use, is there a moral dilemma – or is the thing redeemed? Substitute the words ‘money’ and ‘camera’ for the word ‘thing’ and you have two examples in the film of how this works. Then there is the fact that the parent characters in the film, particularly Ruby and Cyrus, are trying to make up for having screwed up in their lives and the effect it has had on their loved ones – their children in particular – and how they try and set things straight. And the film is full of surrogate relationships: Paul the man in need of a son, and Rashid the boy in search of a father; Auggie, the man who has no family but takes it upon himself to help out Ruby’s daughter – the kindness of strangers, if you will. And then there’s the theme of storytelling itself. The film is full of tales, some of them are tall; some of them may even be true. The story that Auggie tells Paul at the end of the film may or may not be true, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter, it’s a good story, and it ties up the entire film nicely.

They question is, though, fifteen years after its release, does ‘Smoke’ hold up? On the whole yes. The criticism that I have of it are criticisms I had when I first saw it over 10 years ago – nothing much has changed. At times, the film is too deliberately slow for its own good. Wang and Auster deliberately set out to make a film that flew in the face of the then cinematic trend of action, explosions, and music-video-style editing. But sometimes, they go a little too far, sometimes the film is just a little too slow. And then there’s the character of Felicity, played by Ashley Judd: the character doesn’t work. That’s no criticism of the performance of Ashley Judd, it’s just that the character is a walking talking cliché, and that’s down primarily to Auster. Watching the film on DVD, I found myself skipping through some of the scenes to I found boring to get to the scenes that I like, the scenes that I remember the film for. I could watch the final scene between Harvey Keitel and William Hurt, when Keitel tells Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story a dozen times: both actors are so compelling, and Harvey Keitel is a master storyteller. Other scenes, I just skipped through: the whole Felicity sequence, Rashid working in Auggie’s shop and a few others. ‘Smoke’ is a strange film in this respect: it’s less than two hours long, but feels like a lot more. If you like the film, then that time is not enough; if you don’t like the film then it will seem like an eternity of suffering.

‘Smoke’ just about holds up. It’s brilliant by moments. But you do have to sit though some mediocre stuff to get to those moments – and that requires patience.

But there is one thing that is undeniable about ‘Smoke’: it’s a generous film. It’s generous to its actors, who are given the time and space to breathe and really bring to life their characters; it’s characters are generous (on the whole) to each other. The theme of generosity crossed over into the real world as well. In a remarkable act of directorial generosity, Wayne Wang gave Paul Auster a co-filmmaking credit, and the film is, officially, “A film by Wayne Wang and Paul Auster”. Wang received a small amount of grief from the Director’s Guild, some of whose members were angry at him for having shared the filmmaking credit with a writer.

‘Smoke’ was made for  $6 million. It tool $8 million at the US box-office. It took a further $22 million in the rest of the world, and became a cult hit in France, Japan and Germany. It’s an important little film – flawed in places, but nonetheless important. And once you’ve seen it, there’s no doubt it will stay with you. And, maybe, just maybe, you’ll watch it again. Paul Auster said that if the film achieved that much – people going back to watch it again – he would consider it a success.

He has every reason to consider it as much.

- April 2010

'The Dark Knight' - Two Years On...

‘The Dark Knight’ - two years on

It was midway through 2008, and the movie-going world was waiting for the year’s breakout blockbuster. It was coming. There was buzz. There was hype. There was mass marketing. There were toys and other tie-ins. There was the fact that one of the film’s stars had recently passed away (at that time, speculation about the true cause death was persisting). There had been a preview of the first 10 minutes at Comicon which has been rapturously well received by the fans in attendance. It was coming. ‘The Dark Knight’ was coming.

Usually, such buzz, such hype, such marketing is par for the course for a summer blockbuster and says little about the quality of the film – only that the film has the backing of a major studio able to fork out the dough to publicise it and get it into as many screens as possible. To be honest, I was sceptical. ‘Batman Begins’ had been good, but not exceptional. It had been a comic-book movie in the true sense of the term: Batman battled his way through a stylised, pretty unrealistic CGI Gotham, fighting a couple of villains who were pretty underwhelming. It had been an ‘origins story’, nothing more. And a return to that same visual style, and to that world, in a sequel would be equally underwhelming – but no doubt very profitable.

It is fair to say that it is rare for a film to live up to its hype. Usually, it doesn’t happen. Usually, the hype is there to conceal the weaknesses in a film, a form of distraction, an unsubtle sleight-of-hand, an act of subliminal suggestion: we’re spending all this money on this film because it deserves it and therefore must be good. Very rarely is this truly the case. Because very rarely is a film actually that good.

And then there’s ‘The Dark Knight’. The film for which no such subliminal suggestion was necessary – but they did it anyway. They had to, I suppose.

But what made ‘The Dark Knight’ so superlative, so superior to its predecessor film, and to its competitors? It was a combination of many elements coming together. Perhaps it started with the story, by Christopher Nolan and David S Goyer, which was then turned into a screenplay by Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan. It was a story that dared to push the boat out in terms of what an action-movie , a superhero movie at that, could do. It was ambitious because it wanted to go beyond the confines of its genre, and risk alienating its audience in so doing, to make a film with intelligence, where there were clear themes, themes that went beyond those typical of the superhero movie: superhero, who has a double identity, must choose, in the final reel, between saving the world or saving the woman who has fallen in love with the alter-ego. Such a choice was presented at the end of ‘Batman Forever’ and the end of the first ‘Spiderman’ movie. In that respect, the thematic stakes in a superhero movie are not high. But ‘The Dark Knight’ lifted them clear out of sight, aided by the fact that, as is made clear several times by the characters in the film, Batman is not a hero. And he’s certainly no superhero.

Thus freed from the confines of the superhero genre, the scriptwriters were free to take the film and its characters in a different direction. Certainly, the question of heroics, and what it takes to be a hero, is explored in ‘The Dark Knight’, and is made explicit in the White Knight/Dark Knight dichotomy between Harvey Dent and Bruce Wayne/Batman. But for these filmmakers, that’s not enough, and they throw in a further layer of complication, neatly summed up by Aaron Eckhart’s Harvey Dent early on in the movie: “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain”.

In terms of a villain, ‘The Dark Knight’ gave us one of the best villains in movie history. Further, it gave us one of the most interesting and freakishly terrifying characters in movie history in Heath Ledger’s portrayal of Batman’s nemesis, the Joker. It’s a towering performance from Ledger, and performance that made his untimely death all the more tragic. He created a truly terrifying character: one that literally walks in off the street, and is believable – albeit sociopathic and psychotic. Just as the Joker steals the city of Gotham from underneath Batman, so Ledger steals the film from everybody else. But that’s just as it should be, and without exception the rest of the cast were gracious enough go along with it.

Part of the effectiveness of the film, particularly in respect of the physical violence against other characters, is that it happens off-screen. There’s very little blood seen in this film. The effectiveness of the violence, like in ‘Jaws’, is enhanced by the music of Hans Zimmer and James Newton-Howard.

And unlike its predecessor, where Gotham was largely a CGI construction, ‘The Dark Knight’ is grounded in reality – a verisimilitude – underscored by the extensive use of location shooting. Gone are the sweeping CGI vistas of ‘Batman Begins’. These have been replaced by more realistic cityscapes against which Batman’s battle of wits with the Joker is played out.

It is this battle of wits which forms the backbone of the film. Beneath the action is a morality play: Batman represents Order. The Joker, Chaos. Harvey Two-Face, Chance. And each one believes his respect creed is fair. “You know the thing about chaos?” says the Joker to Harvey, “It’s fair”. Later, Harvey Two-Face echoes that sentiment in respect of his own creed, that of chance, “Pure, unbiased chance” he says, as he flips his lucky coin to see if Commissioner Gordon’s son will live or die.

The conflict between these creeds is what drives the film. Or, as the Joker puts it to Batman at the end of the film, in respect of the conflict between the two of them: “It’s what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object…You can’t kill me out of some misguided principle, and I won’t kill you…because you’re just too much fun. I think you and I are destined to do this forever.”

Mention must be made of the supporting players: Rachel Dawes – as played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, is smart, plausible – and tragic. Gary Oldman is growing ever more comfortable with his role of Jim Gordon. And Michael Caine once again turns in a nice performance as Alfred Pennyworth.

And yet, this film is not flawless. There are plot holes: the Joker is able to rig explosives in numerous buildings seemingly at a moment’s notice, without anyone else in Gotham noticing; and he’s always one step ahead, seemingly able to predict unforeseeable events long before they happen. And, every twenty minutes the Nolan brothers like to blow something up – with each explosion getting gradually more spectacular than the last. This last element is not exactly subtle – but it at least keeps the audience paying attention.

With ‘The Dark Knight’, it is clearly established that Batman is not the hero – he is what Gotham needs him to be. This lends the film a particular political reading – one that can be seen as a vindication of right-wing Republicanism: Batman is America, the unpopular guardian, ridding the world of terrorists when no-one else will – and if that has to be done by violence, then so be it. If this reading is correct, then it’s a sentiment that does not chime with the liberal sensibilities of those in Hollywood who hand out awards. Maybe today USA is more Batman than Superman, but this reading is probably going too far. But it may partially explain why the film was overlooked in Best Film category at the Oscars. Except Leger, who was honoured posthumously, and justifiably, for his portrayal of the Joker. I believe that he should have got the award in any event, such was the quality of his performance.

Two years on, this remains a great movie. Raises the bar for not only superhero movies, but for blockbusters in general. Proof that you can mix deep ideas in a popular format. You just have to know how. The Nolan brothers knew how with this movie. The question is, with Batman 3, will they be able to recapture the magic? Michael Caine has said that he doesn’t think there should be a third instalment, as he’s not sure they can surpass ‘The Dark Knight’. With the greatest respect to Sir Michael, noble though his sentiments are, I expect to see him in the third instalment (as I am sure he contractually obliged to do it). As a good friend of mine put it: they have to do a third instalment – this is like the end of ‘The Empire Strikes Back’, this is Han Solo in carbonite, they have to resolve this story. While this is true, recent third instalments have not been brilliant (witness ‘Spiderman 3’), and lest we not forget that the original Star Wars saga went out with what Harrison Ford called ‘the teddy bears’ picnic’ at the end of ‘Return of the Jedi’. A third instalment? It’s inevitable. I just hope the Nolan brothers continue in the vein of ‘The Dark Knight’ – keep the film grounded in reality. If the Riddler or Catwoman are going to appear (as current rumour has it they will), make them as grounded in reality and as believable as Heath Ledger made the Joker.

“The night is darkest just before the dawn…but I promise you, the dawn is coming” says Harvey Dent. We now wait to see what that dawn will bring in terms of the third instalment in this franchise.

- June 2010